The goal of the proposed research is to study some of the neural mechanisms in the forebrain control of eye movements. I will begin by studying the cortical and subcortical regions that are thought to be involved in the direction and maintenance of gaze. Microelectrode recordings will be made from alert, behaving rhesus monkeys in order to seek correlations between the discharge of single neurons, eye movements, and visual stimuli. The monkeys will be trained on a visual fixation task. Studies will focus on three areas that have been shown to contain cells that discharge before the onset of saccadic eye movements or are believed to be on the path for visual information to reach these visuomotor regions. Several control experiments are proposed in the inferior parietal cortex in order to test the hypothesis that it functions as a sensorimotor processing area with cells possessing distinct sensory, motor, and sensorimotor properties. The efferent projections of this region will be traced anatomically with autoradiographic techniques and also physiologically by testing for antidromic activation. The pretectal region will be studied in order to determine the properties of cells in its different sub-nuclei in relation to visual stimuli or visuomotor activities. Finally, it is proposed to begin studies of the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus, which has been shown in the cat to be involved in the direction of visual attention and is connected with both the inferior parietal cortex and the pretectum. Studies in the pretectum and intralaminar nuclei have not yet been done in primates. It is hoped that these experiments will provide additional information about the possible role of these structures in controlling eye movements.